growing hope...

Welcome to my garden...

This past weekend, I made it up to the UCSC Farm & Garden plant sale for the first time ever. Ridiculous, right? While they had a smaller stash than I expected, it was of great variety (particularly for a lover of salvias.) I planted my new mexican sages - black and chartreuse - and a beautiful dicolor salvia.

I had just pulled out mountains of sweet peas and sunflowers at the end of their bloom, along with past-prime pole beans that had been planted quite early in the season (but fear not, dear legume lovers, as there are several more waves of beans staggered for full summer-to-winter enjoyment!)

I also planted spinach, a wonderful blend of lettuce and broccoli for late fall harvest. When our CSA expires for the spring/summer growing season, we will have quite the barren table... A dearth of local, affordable produce, as it were. Dang I love Live Earth Farms.

I find myself most peaceful - most able to concentrate and file away the craze and business of the week - when puttering in the garden. I think I could putter 24/7 if I found a way to make it pay the bills...

Going off on that tangent, I would love to have this potting bench to make that whole venture "easier on the back..." ;o) I know that Smith & Hawken is an expensive habit to have, but dang does it feel great to open the trunk and *surprise!!!* A new garden shovel! *Wooohoo!!!* A fantastic trowel! *SheBAM!* Seedling markers! If this potting bench were to arrive? Combine all above excitement, multiply to the nth degree and that would be my reaction were this to appear on our doorstep... (And it is on SALE! Dang the budget!)

Someday we will have enough space and sun to grow all of our own edible plant matter (and flowers, too, because really, why bother with a garden that doesn't smell like heaven and glisten in the noon sun with a full million-color-spectrum of blooms.) Until then, this is my garden.

Grow, garden, grow...